Kanye West

According to The Hill’s article about Kanye West, West thinks that Africans that were brought to America as slaves were given a “choice” to become slaves. Kanye West was seen with President Trump and many people thought that he got his slavery comment from Trump. He created a controversy in the black community. He might have done this because he loves getting attention. On Wednesday, April 25, West tweeted “You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him.” Kanye lost millions of followers for tweeting positive things about Trump.

West was seen wearing a Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat, and posted a picture on Twitter. He also made a statement that said, “Slavery was a choice.” This angered a lot of people to the point where his own wife called him out on Twitter to stop the nonsense. His friend, John Legend, reached out to him and told him that “Abraham Lincoln freed slaves and also helped them, and that he was Republican. And that Republicans were the ones who helped a black people back then.” And he ended the text with “Not trying to manipulate your freethought; Trying to inform you!” West tweeted a screenshot of the messages, and many people said that Legend genuinely was just trying to inform him and his fans on how the topic of slavery is really sensitive to many people. People thought it was low of West to post a private conversation with his friend on Twitter.

Many celebrities that idealized Kanye for his music and personality were very disappointed and hurt by his comments. According to a Nicki Swift article, singer Will.i.am said, “And when you’re a slave, you’re owned,” he said. “You don’t choose if you’re owned… That statement is one of the most ignorant statement that anybody who came from the hood could ever say about their ancestors, that slavery is a choice”. Will.i.am reacted to Kanye’s comment because his great-great-grandmother was a slave. He believed that slavery wasn’t a choice, and Kanye was wrong to say that it was. Another celebrity that spoke about Kanye’s comment was the singer Eve. She said, “You want to be a free thinker, you want to be thought provoking, you cannot have these ideas without facts to back them up. Slavery is a fact. Slavery is part of our history… We are still feeling the effects of slavery within our community, within our culture. It hurts me”. Eve spoke about how slavery still affects the black community to this day, and couldn’t have been a choice.

Kanye West doesn’t know that the comments he made on slavery, and supporting Trump, caused him his followers on Twitter, and hurt his career. He just thought he was expressing his opinion, which he was but, it caused really bad tension between him and the black community because what he said was not true. Also, many African Americans saw him as a role model, so for them to hear Kanye say those comments really hurt them.